the-south-asian.com                                               MARCH  2002

 

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MARCH 2002 Contents

 

 Literature

 Neemrana - literary storm in a 
 desert

 Society & Culture

 Basant- the Kite festival without
 Frontier
s

 Visual Arts

 Tagore's 'Geetanjali' on canvas

 Leadership

 Know your leaders - Part II

 Rabri Devi

 Jyotiraditya Scindia

 Business & Economy

 Sialkot - a city at work

 Heritage

Lutyen's 'dream city' turns into a
 nightmare

 Environment & Wildlife

 Rainwater harvesting

 Forests - Encroached & Poached

 Viewpoint

 'Punjabi Dawakhana'

 Lifestyle 

 E-relationships

 Sports

 Shiva Keshavan - India's lone Luger

 Vishwanathan Anand 

 Books

 'Knock at Every Alien Door'
 - Serialization of an
 unpublished novel by
 Joseph Harris - Chapter 3

 Fashion 

 2002 Statement - 4 Designers

 

Editor's Note

 


the craft shop

the print gallery

Books

Silk Road on Wheels

The Road to Freedom

Enduring Spirit

Parsis-Zoroastrians of
India

The Moonlight Garden

Contemporary Art in Bangladesh

 

 

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Editor's Note

 

Daniel Pearl's merciless and meaningless execution at the hands of mindless, barbaric individuals jolted many to the very sad reality around us today. The brutality of capturing his torture and his last painful moments of life on video, is on par with what Hitler and Nadir Shah and many other medieval characters did to their contemporaries. Human viciousness seems limitless. Pearl's very brave wife remarked that, "His captors have killed him, but not his spirit." His spirit has indeed survived. There was never a greater need for such spirit than now. The carnage at Godhra and the subsequent insanity, spread like bushfire, while the keepers of our state machinery took their time to react to the rampage that took 500 lives or more. The collective wisdom of our history and civilisation has taught us, time and again, that two wrongs do not make a right. Yet we seem to have lost our power of discrimination and discernment. Most of us who grew up in India, were weaned on Jataka tales and parables from mythology - yet we seem to forget the most important of metaphors  - the example of an elephant. The strongest animal of the jungle can uproot giant trees and can also pluck a single blade of grass - gently and sensitively.

Tariq Saeedi's 'Punjabi Dawakhana' published in this issue of the-south-asian, is a subtle reminder of the irrationality of obsessive ethnicity and 'irreligious' fervour.

 

Roopa Bakshi

 

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